


Love Is

by notcrindy



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Memory Loss, i know this probably doesn't make sense but i wrote this to cope sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-02-05 01:53:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12784398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notcrindy/pseuds/notcrindy
Summary: Merle gets hit with a memory loss spell. It's only getting worse, and no one knows why. Lucretia is concerned. Maybe the lush plantlife of this planet will help. Takes place during the Stolen Century sometime.





	Love Is

Not much to do about it when your cleric needs healing.

It starts out as an ordinary enough cycle, and ends without the Light of Creation. Merle gets suckered into believing that, though the culture of this world is violent, they truly do want to change. He spends weeks among what seem like ordinary enough folk, helping them to build a church, helping them to do some good, and he leads them to the Light without meaning to. All it takes is that misstep and he’s hit with a memory loss spell before they go.

Back on the ship, Davenport’s hightailing it out of there. Everyone’s grateful enough that no one got killed, and Magnus and the Twins are pretty uproarious in their celebration. But it’s Lucretia, as always, the youngest and most observant of the group. It’s Lucretia, the wallflower, that rushes to his side and asks a million questions to make sure nothing’s wrong.

“Don’t you worry about ol’ Merle,” he reassures her. “I’ll be fine!”

“But you’re not right _now,_ and that should be handled. We shouldn’t be so quick to celebrate. Weren’t you hit with a memory loss spell?”

“ _Pch,_ hardly. Weak spell bounced right off’a me, barely did a thing.” He’s smiling.

“You’re sure?” She’s scrutinizing every inch of his face.

“Well, I can remember _you,_ can’t I?”

“Can you?” Her eyes are blue, fierce and searching. His eyes are always soft green, the color of moss. He’d like that. She’s worried he looks too unfocused.

“Of course I can,” he insists, somewhat defensively. “Plus, even if it _did_ do somethin’, Lucretia, it’ll be reset same as always. You don’t gotta worry about me, okay?”

“Okay,” she says softly.

Reset comes and goes, heralded by the usual appearance of Magnus’s black eye and other such tells they’ve come to look for, and she tries to tell herself she’s just being silly. She pushes the thought out of her mind, and focuses on trying to figure out how to evade the Hunger as they move onto the next world.

The aforementioned world is surrounded by lush plantlife, far as the eye can see. Druids are most common here, and Treants. The loveliest thing by far is a field as far as the eye can see of lavender, and it’s so beautiful it’s hard to imagine having any problems whatsoever here. Lucretia’s eager to learn about flowers she doesn’t yet recognize; she wants to sketch what it looks like when the moon rises and moonflowers blossom.

Maybe, this time, they can rest.

Taako immediately begins braiding flowers into his hair, and Lup concerns herself with pointing out how stupid it is until she sees that Barry’s picked her a flower for her to wear in hers. She goes around the rest of the cycle with a carnation behind her ear, and Taako sews his smugly into the brim of his hat. They get to know the locals, ‘cuz they’re big on languages, and Lucretia admits to tagging along a few times with them, mostly to sketch both twins and think of how beautiful they look and blush to herself.

Magnus is more concerned this time with the Light, because he heard it was on the top of some high and craggy peak. She frets for him at first, since he doesn’t tend to think things through, but he’s eager to climb and Davenport is going along with him, so it’s not too bad. She knows Mags is blessed with loads of strength, not loads of brains, but she trusts her captain to get him through. He gets them through almost anything.

Of course, she’s not at all concerned for Merle in this world. This is a world practically made for him, and he reveres nature so much she figures he’ll probably enjoy it more than anyone. She doesn’t think about it much, when he asks to be alone to take it all in. She doesn’t think about it much, when he tags along with herself and Taako and Lup and Barry, and he sits down next to her drinking some sort of milk out of the husk of a fruit she’s never seen before, sighing with contentment.

“Hey, Merle,” she says, scrambling to cover up certain drawings of Lup.

“Hey there, Lucretia,” he greets her warmly as ever, taking a big long swig of fruit-milk. “What’cha drawin’ there?” He’s got a twinkle in his eye.

She takes a moment to compose herself, blushing furiously. “Not poisonous?” She casts a wary glance to the drink, quickly changing the subject. “I’ve never seen that fruit before.”

“Pfft, _nah._ I mean, I haven’t either, but y’know I can tell. Pan’s got my back.”

“Ah.” She can accept this, at least. Merle is highly tuned into nature in general on a level that she doesn’t quite understand, but does so admire, so she leaves it be as they sit together on the sand, looking out at another beach. She knows enough to know that these beaches are his favorite, too.

“Say, d’you know where my glasses are, kid? Can’t seem to find ‘em.”

They’re right on his face. “Ha, oh. Um. This is one of those ‘goofs,’ isn’t it? Well, um--”

“Goofs? What’re you talking about? I can’t find my glasses.”

“Oh, oops, I--I didn’t realize you were serious.” She’s quick to correct herself. “Yes, um. They’re on your face.”

“What? Are they? Oh.” He laughs. “Huh, I really thought I’d lost ‘em for a second! Swear I’d forget my own head if it weren’t attached to my body.”

She laughs too, initially. “You’re rather silly, you know.”

“I think you can be pretty silly yourself.”

She laughs softly, her face going slightly red again. “I know I can, don’t worry.”

She spends the rest of the day drawing pictures of flowers and hearing Merle tell her neat facts about some of them, which she adds to the Journal. Barely even thinks about it. It’s a pretty nice day, all in all, until they head back to camp and Merle doubles over in pain. Davenport’s not around, Barry doesn’t know what the plant he ate is, and Lucretia is all fury and cursing under her breath because of _course_ it was poisonous, of _course_ it was.

They’ve got him on a bed inside the ship, and he’s sweating.

“You _told_ me that wasn’t poisonous, Merle. You _told_ me you _knew._ ”

“How could he know? I’ve never seen anything like that before. Have you, babe?”

“‘Course not, babe.”

“We don’t know dick about plant life here in _general,_ ” Taako snaps, likely from the amount of stress he’s under. “Why would you _believe_ him, Lu?”

“He said--he said…” Her eyes are filled with tears and her face is hot. “He said Pan’s got his back.” Her voice is cracking with embarrassment and tears and anger.

“Oh, he _always_ says stuff like that, Lu. Doesn’t mean you should go around _believing_ him.”

“Shut up,” she says quietly.

“ _Excuse_ me? What did you say to me? Oh, I _know_ you didn’t just tell me to--”

“Shut up, Taako,” her voice is soft, but she’s so angry.

“Oh, so you _did_ say that, huh? Well--”

She slaps him, without hesitation, across the face.

He recoils, shocked as she is, and even Lup looks surprised as she runs to her brother’s side.

“Pan’s. **_Always._ ** Got his back.” She isn’t the slightest bit embarrassed, though her legs are trembling awfully. “But right now I have to, and I have to go make him throw up, okay?”

Just like that, she gets a bucket and helps him when he spews every bit of it out. Nobody objects to this. Barry’s concerned with memorizing the name of this plant so no one else has a run in with it, so he asks if he can borrow her Journals and she says of course. Everyone else gives them space for a little while, and when they can finally be certain the poison is out of Merle’s system, she sits and watches him rest.

There are cycles where any number of them dies for any number of reasons. It could’ve been Merle today. It’s not like it hasn’t been Merle before. But something about this entire incident just makes her feel strange, and relieved he’s alive for now.

She’s nearly nodding off when Lup saunters in, carnation behind her ear, to apologize for her brother. It’s no big deal, though. Lucretia waves it off, because everyone was heated, and apologizes for hitting him.

“Pfft, it’s fine. He’s taken worse hits for being stupid before! Don’t worry ‘bout it, Lucy. You were just doin’ what you had to, and that’s brave.”

“Thank you.”

“ _I_ certainly wouldn’t wanna clean the vomit out of the old guy’s beard,” Taako interjects, not ever far behind. “Anyway, I’m sorry too, Lu. Things got kinda outta hand back there, but you handled it like a real pro.”

“Don’t mention it, Taako. We were all very concerned. I understand.”

She doesn’t sleep that night, but Merle does.

“You look like hell, kiddo,” he says kindly when he rises.

“I was very worried about you, Merle. You told me that Pan had your back, but you ate a poisonous fruit and its juices.”

“He _does_ have my back,” Merle’s arguments were never full of passion, but this sounds almost nonchalant. “He just gets shit wrong too sometimes, is all! Tries his best to let me know what’s bad for me and what’s good for me and slips up sometimes, y’know?”

“I suppose,” Lucretia agrees quietly. “But please don’t--don’t let that happen again.”

“I won’t,” Merle promises sweetly. “Now you just get some good rest today. Don’t fret ‘bout me. I think I’ll just keep enjoying the beach.”

She reluctantly agrees to these terms, and when she wakes up, it’s to different news.

“Merle’s gone missing? How?”

“Look, listen, we dunno, he just must have wandered off--”  
  
“He wandered off in the middle of the night?”  Maybe he wanted to look at the moonflowers. She leaves the ship with their help, but they all split up, and she insists upon going alone. When she finds him, she finds him wandering the woods.

“Merle? What are you doing out here?”

He turns, and for a moment she can tell he looks lost. He looks scared, _because_ he’s lost. But as usual, he smooths it over. “Just wanted to get a good look at those moonflowers. Heard those things’re real pretty at night. Wanna come with?”

She should scold him. Accuse him of being lost. Instead, she agrees to lead him to the moonflowers, and they spend some time just watching them together, and she spends some time scribbling in her journal and sketching, and when he’s close to sleep she gently nudges him awake and they walk back together.

“It’s this way,” she says, too tired to censor herself.

“Thanks,” he says. “Got a li’l lost today.” He’s too tired to censor himself, too.

“I know,” Lucretia says, and her blood runs cold as she leads him back.

They go awhile with no incidents, and she nearly manages to push it out of her mind again. Occasionally she has to remind Merle where he set his glasses, where this certain horribly bright shirt with palm trees on it has gone, or what a certain cantrip or spell is, but that’s just normal absent-mindedness. Every time she might think to bristle against it or question it in any way, he waves her off and makes her feel foolish.

“Hey, we’re just adjusting to this new world, aren’t we?”

“I suppose that’s true, yes, but--”

“It’s not like _you_ haven’t gotten lost once or twice.”

“Well, no, but--”

“‘sides, you know Pan’s lookin’ out for me, don’t’cha? He’s--”

“Always got your back,” she murmurs. “I get it.”

It’s always enough time for her to be lulled into a false sense of security, and then it’ll happen again. She finds him a few times wading out into the ocean and has to drag him back, and he’ll babble at her with some new excuse about Pan, and she’ll start to wonder about the wellbeing Pan has for his subjects in the first place. She finds him, a few times, just barely off the path and clearly looking around for anyone or anything he recognizes. She starts leaving reminders around him, so that he knows where to meet them all if he sleeps in, or he doesn’t put on the wrong pair of specs.

It’ll dawn on her again to be worried. And yet again, she’ll be reassured that Pan always knows what he’s doing with her ol’ pal Merle Highchurch; she’ll be told that he was putting on the wrong clothes for _goofs_ obviously, and she’s just not in on the joke. Of course, the Twins are no help, eager to take nothing all that seriously. Barry mostly stays quiet, occasionally raising eyebrows but ultimately rationalizing it all by saying that there’s no _way_ a memory loss spell would outlast the reset. She’s just being paranoid, and Merle’s always eccentric.

No big deal.

Maybe it wouldn’t be, but she starts having nightmares.

In all variations of them, Merle has lost a little bit more. In every single one, he’s losing his grip on what’s around him, unable to comprehend words on a page or the basics of reality. Sometimes, he forgets her name; sometimes, he forgets her face. On particularly horrible occasions, he forgets both, and he’ll wander off and snack on some toxic tangerine or something. She’ll find him knee-deep in turbulent water, spewing frantic prayers to Pan, all while losing any semblance of his mind, and no one will believe her.

That’s just Merle, after all, they say. He’s eccentric. He’s like that. His relationship with Pan’s always been a little weird.

Lucretia wakes up in a cold sweat more often than not now. She’s learned to tiptoe quietly to check on him, a force of habit in case he decides to stumble off in the middle of the night again. She finds herself hardly focused at all on the Twins and Barry now, or even the whereabouts of Captain Davenport and Magnus; none of it matters as much as making sure Merle doesn’t bite into some fruit he shouldn’t, or wander into some deadly flower patch, or forget how to get back to the ship. People notice how frazzled she is, but try to dismiss it as nerves. She sketches him often. She journals about him too much this year.

She asks to borrow some of Lup’s spell books, and spends days poring over anything she can find about memory loss spells and their reversals, and dedicates herself to memorizing them. He won’t even entertain the thought long enough for her to get near, but she thinks maybe if she can manage to do it in his sleep…

None of it works.

He gets worse.

When he forgets the name of his god one day and people realize he’s serious, they start to rally around her. Barry works furiously beside her, alongside Taako and Lup, to find some sort of cure. Merle insists, all the while, that he’s fine, but she’s only too relieved now that people know he’s not.

“Merle, my dude, your memory is _whack,_ okay?”

“ _Whacked?_ Pff, _naw,_ my memory’s fine! See? Lup there agrees with me.”

“...I am Lup, Merle. That’s Taako.”

“Easy mistake, you’re both twins,” he tries to argue. “Besides, I could never forget--uh--Barry, too, so.”

“You’re struggling, my man,” Barry smiles weakly. “Sorry. Know it’s gotta be frustrating. But we’ll set it right.”

“Pan **_damn_ ** it,” he spits with the most anger and fury any of them have ever heard, but those eyes look scared. “There’s nothing _wrong_ with me, d’you understand? You’re all gettin’ yourselves worked up for _nothing,_ okay? _Nothing._ ”

They’re all silent and staring at his face.

“I’m just fine, and d’you know why? ‘cuz Pan’d never let this happen to me, that’s why. Pan’d never do this to me. He’s got my back. Just ask Lucretia over there. She knows.”

Now all eyes are on her, and her face is hot.

“She’s the one who’s been tellin’ us all along somethin’s wrong, Merle,” Barry confesses, looking away. “She’s worried about you.”

He turns on her, and his eyes are so betrayed and hurt. She can hardly stomach it, the idea that he would be surprised by her worry even one bit when she’s been voicing concern all along, the idea that if she worries for him she’s somehow dismissing his faith or disrespecting him. Her cheeks are hot and tears begin to spill. “Merle, listen. I’m afraid. I’m afraid something’s terribly wrong.”

“But Lucretia,” Merle insists, moving closer. “Pan wouldn’t do this to me--”

“How do you _know?_ ” She asks, and she sounds louder and more desperate than she intended to sound. “Merle, how do you know your god _wouldn’t_ do this to you? And if it’s not him, we need to figure out what it is. Because it’s… ...it’s winning, Merle. It’s got you in a losing battle. I’m sorry.”

She’s sobbing, now, and given that she’s the baby of the ship, they all want to move in to hug her. Lup does, of course, and Barry is quick to follow suit, but Taako keeps sort of an awkward distance until finally giving in. Merle’s silent now, watching her sob, but he has a thoughtful look on his face.

When she’s finally done, he says, “Okay. Maybe this is a problem, then.”

“Yeah?” Tears are still forming in her eyes, but she’s trying to compose herself a little.

“But it’s _my_ problem, and that means I get to deal with it the way I see fit. Holistic remedies, prayers, the whole shebang, okay?”

“...Okay, Merle,” she agrees.

The rest of the team does so, too.

“Okay. Now let’s kick this thing’s butt.”

They devote the rest of their time to trying things his way. Barry uses his excellent memory skills to memorize prayers instead of theories. Taako learns holistic recipes and transmutes things into more helpful mixtures, and Lup works alongside him. Merle asks Lucretia during a moment of quietness between the two of them to write up his biography, and she faithfully does so, the entire year. All the while she leaves reminders for him, guides him when he needs to be guided, leads him home when he needs to be led, and sticks by his side.

Sometimes, love isn’t enough.

He forgets Magnus first. He hasn’t seen Magnus in awhile.

Then, he forgets Barry. Taako and Lup come soon after.

It takes awhile for him to stop asking Lucretia when Cap’n ‘Port will be back, but he does.

Soon, nearly the entire crew is full of names and faces he doesn’t know. Barry tries to be gentle in his awkward way, and repeats his name at every opportunity. Lup tries to play it off light-heartedly, hoping that Taako will echo her and do the same. It’s no bigs, man. Just having one of those bad memory days is all.

On the day he forgets Lucretia’s name, his eyes are serious, but so far away. She’s shaking as he grabs her hand as they sit back and look at the ocean, the waves moving back and forth, the sunset so beautiful.

“I want you to read to me,” he says, “from that book. About us. It’ll help me get to sleep.”

“Merle. I--”

“Shh, shh, shh. Listen.” He’s looking right into her eyes, and hers are tearful. He brushes back a hair on her face. “Listen to me. I don’t want to end my time here… ...like this. So I want to die soon.”

“Merle--”

“Then maybe I’ll come back with everything. But you have to be the one to do it. Poison me. Take me to the lavender field. It’s nice there. It’ll be okay.”

“No.” Lucretia’s tearing up horribly. “No, Merle, I can’t… I can’t do this, please.”

“You’re the only one I trust.” He wipes away one of her tears. “Listen. I believe in you. You know I do.”

She sits in silence, sobbing, and he holds her while she does. Nothing in the world matters but the two of them, and what they’ve shared up until this moment, so eventually she collects herself and finds the portion of the biography where he’s met her and reads. She reads with a croaking voice wracked with grief about how much he’d been there for her, how much wisdom he’d always imparted, how she always appreciated his presence so much, until he falls asleep on her lap.

When the sun rises the next morning, she knows what must be done. She brews some toxic plants into a tea and steeps it, and he sips it gratefully when he wakes.

“Who're you? The water’s nice today, huh?”

She could fall to her knees.

She doesn’t.

Lucretia says, “Yes, it is,” and he falls to his.

She takes him to the lavender field. Purple swirls around her in all directions, this scent diluting the salt air, and she lays him down soft. She prays for Pan to bring him back with all his memories next cycle, please. She vows that if he doesn’t, she’ll still be there, to help him remember. She cries. She reads from the book.

“You may forget me, Merle Highchurch,” she whispers. “But I will never forget you.”

Sometimes love isn’t enough.

Other times, it is.

**Author's Note:**

> well, um. unfortunately, i wrote this to cope with my grandmother's condition. she has a brain tumor and is expected to live six more months, and is my best friend in the entire world. we've always bonded over spirituality, so... this felt appropriate. sorry if it's rushed or doesn't make sense. thanks for reading, though. i'll be back with other things
> 
> it feels fitting to update this today to say that i have just found out my grandma passed away last night in her sleep. she waited until my birthday was over to go. i am full of grief and not sure how to handle it at the moment, but she was my very best friend and i wrote this for her. goodnight, Grandma. i love you more than words.


End file.
